Your Right to Know

When attorneys for U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci stated in a court filing late Wednesday that he had
been subpoenaed by GOP donor Benjamin Suarez to testify on his behalf, it was the latest item to
come up in the government’s case against Suarez that seemed to contradict what Treasurer Josh
Mandel or Mandel’s aides have said about the case.

Suarez is accused of illegally funneling about $200,000 to Mandel and to Renacci in 2011 by
reimbursing his employees for their donations to them. Since the federal government started to make
its case against Suarez in a jury trial, it has made statements that appear to be directly at odds
with what Mandel and people who work for him have said about the ordeal since
The Blade newspaper of Toledo first raised questions about Suarez’s contributions in
August 2011.

Prosecutors said Suarez met privately with the state treasurer on March 15, 2011, to “convince
Josh Mandel to write letters” on behalf of Suarez’s business, which was facing possible litigation
in California. A similar meeting took place in May of that year between Mandel and Suarez, right at
the time another letter Suarez had asked for from Mandel was in the works.

When these letters first came to light through court records in the fall of 2013, Chris Berry, a
spokesman for the treasurer’s office, told
The Dispatch that Mandel “does not recall being personally involved with these constituent
letters.”

On Wednesday, the government said the second letter Mandel wrote for Suarez, to the California
state treasurer trying to get him to put pressure on some California district attorneys to back off
Suarez, came as Mandel personally asked Suarez to raise $100,000 for his 2012 U.S. Senate
campaign.

But in September 2011, when a Cleveland TV reporter asked Mandel about the Suarez contributions,
Mandel said, “People support folks in leadership positions for a variety of reasons. And it’s not
really realistic to ask every individual why they’re supporting.”

And in October 2013, Berry told
The Dispatch: “It is routine for the treasurer’s office to work to protect Ohio’s jobs and
tax base, and we do so without regard to campaign contributions.”

The Dispatch shared past statements made by Mandel and his aides with Seth Unger,
communication director for the treasurer’s office, seeking an explanation about the apparent
discrepancies from what the government said in court. Unger declined to respond.

In October 2011, still early in the race between Mandel and Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown,
Mandel responded to a
Dayton Daily News question about the Suarez contributions by saying: “These are people who
are angry with the fact that Sherrod Brown has been responsible for so much job loss in the
state of Ohio, and they are motivated to support us because of that.”

But in court Wednesday, federal prosecutors said many of the Suarez company employees who
contributed had no history of campaign donations and would not have donated to Mandel and Renacci
if they had not been promised reimbursement — a violation of federal law.

Yesterday, witnesses including Suarez’s daughter and son-in-law testified they had been
reimbursed by the company.

So, how did a court filing by Renacci’s attorneys possibly contradict something Mandel had said?
On Friday,
The Dispatch was told by multiple sources that both Mandel and Renacci had been subpoenaed
to testify by Suarez, and that lawyers for Renacci and Mandel were expected to file motions to
quash the subpoenas.

In response, Rebecca Wasserstein, spokeswoman for Mandel’s treasurer’s campaign, said, “Neither
the defense nor the prosecution has notified (Mandel) that they will call him to testify.” Other
Mandel aides said the subpoena was only for records. But in their court filing, Renacci’s attorneys
said, “Suarez likewise has subpoenaed ... Congressman Renacci himself, seeking both trial testimony
and the production of documents” and Renacci intended to “address those subpoenas in a subsequent
filing.”

Renacci will permit two of his former aides to testify about meetings with, and requests from,
Suarez regarding help he wanted with pending litigation against his company in California.